Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Tracking Migrant children - A challenge




Migration is inevitable when working with construction site children.   But what is important is that the children of Door Step School continue their education even after leaving the site.  

Meet these DSS children who have migrated to a new construction site and were recently found by DSS staff, after school at their new location. 

It is always a big challenge to track down these migrated children. In spite of trying several methods for tracking, such as 'green card', 'My Book", phone tracking etc,  just about 10% children can be tracked. In absolute numbers, out of about 6000 children migrated last year about 590 children were tracked, out of which 569 ( 96.5%) were confirmed to have continued schooling in the new location.  These results are very encouraging and motivating for our staff whose painstaking efforts seem to be yielding positive results towards changing mindset of construction site parents.  

There are instances when parents take up a place for rent even after the site is closed, so that their children's education can continue. Many families have taken decision to take permanent accommodation in one place and father commutes to the site wherever he is assigned. These are great indicators of mindset changes.

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